I've shared lessons #10 and #9 in the countdown of my top ten personal faith lessons. This week, I'm sharing two because I can't separate them. So here we go...
Lesson #8
We all make mistakes, some with much
longer lasting impact than others.
Accepting that we made a bad decision or did a stupid thing, getting
over it and moving forward with life, and forgiving others are extremely
difficult tasks. But isn’t that what God
calls us to do? Isn’t that why Jesus
died?
Too often in the church we have a hard time forgetting
the mistakes people make. Many times, we
can’t even forgive ourselves for our mistakes. We all make them, big or small.
God calls us to get over it! God intends that we operate within deep and
abiding relationships that call for forgiveness. If we live in true relationship with each
other, there are great possibilities ahead!
The stories I hear of things that divide us and cause
us to argue in the local church make me sad.
Sure, there are major issues that we certainly need to address on every
level, but the stories that make me shake my head the most and wonder what God
must be thinking about us are about simple things: the color of the carpet in the sanctuary,
continuing a parsonage or moving to a housing allowance, the lease on the
copier. And please don’t bring up
leadership – pastoral or lay – because too many of us always feel that somebody
is wrong somewhere in those decisions:
we place blame on the Church Council or Staff-Parish Relations
Committee, question who changed the rules and their hidden motivations, and
know that our decision would certainly have been better than what “they” did. What would happen if we all just “got over it”
and placed our time and energy on making ourselves stronger disciples so that
we can make new disciples and together transform the world? Can you imagine a church where we lived out
forgiveness the way that Jesus modeled and how that could change our personal
lives and communities?
Lesson #7
People don’t always get along, but God
uses every situation to teach us lessons of grace. Human beings need to treat
each other with the greatest of respect.
That is a very hard thing to do at times, but our world depends upon
it!
It has
been written that: “God's Grace is a Holy Teacher. God knows we have lessons to
learn and God’s Wonderful and Precious Grace is our teacher.” Our churches will only be richer when we
fully recognize how valuable each and every person is to God.
There is a prayer for use throughout Lent in This Day: A Wesleyan Way of Prayer
written by Obie Wright, Jr., an elder in the Baltimore-Washington Conference
that reads: “My Lord, what a morning
when you shall crown us with the crowns you are holding now above our heads. Chastise, charm and enchant us until we have
grown tall enough to wear them.” I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a ways to
grow till I reach that crown. The
lessons taught through God’s grace make that growth possible. And I pray that, especially as we move toward our Annual Conference next week, we will allow God's grace to work in and through us as we gather and that we will above all else remember that we are disciples together on this journey of faithfulness, each needing to be lifted up in love.
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